In his The Liturgical Year, Dom Guéranger described the great transformation that took place on the first Pentecost:
“These hundred and twenty disciples need but to speak of the Son of God, made Man, and our Redeemer; of the Holy Ghost, who renews our souls; of the heavenly Father, who loves and adopts us as His children: their word will find thousands to believe and welcome it. Those that receive it shall be called the Catholic Church, that is, universal, existing in all places and times. Jesus had said: ‘Go, teach all nations!’ The Holy Ghost brings from heaven both the tongue that is to teach, and the fire (the love of God and of mankind), which is to give warmth and efficacy to the teaching.” (Volume 9, p. 281)
From that first Pentecost until the end of time, the Holy Ghost abides with the Church and will “guide it in the way of holiness and truth” (Baltimore Catechism). Our Lord tasks His Church with converting all nations — and Jesus wants all souls to be saved — but, at the same time, we have numerous indications in the New Testament, including the following two passages from the Gospel of St. Matthew, that not even those who profess to be Christians will be saved:
* “Not every one that saith to me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven: but he that doth the will of my Father who is in heaven, he shall enter into the kingdom of heaven. Many will say to me in that day: Lord, Lord, have not we prophesied in thy name, and cast out devils in thy name, and done many miracles in thy name? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, you that work iniquity. Every one therefore that heareth these my words, and doth them, shall be likened to a wise man that built his house upon a rock, And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and they beat upon that house, and it fell not, for it was founded on a rock.” (Matthew 7:21-25)
* “But if thy brother shall offend against thee, go, and rebuke him between thee and him alone. If he shall hear thee, thou shalt gain thy brother. And if he will not hear thee, take with thee one or two more: that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may stand. And if he will not hear them: tell the church. And if he will not hear the church, let him be to thee as the heathen and publican.” (Matthew 18:15-17)
John Paul II’s monumental encyclical on ecumenism was directly contrary to Pope Pius XI’s Mortalium Animos, and to what the Church, following the clear teaching of Our Lord in the Gospel of St. Matthew, had always taught. John Paul II admitted that he was deviating from what the Church had always taught.
In his commentary on this latter passage, Cornelius à Lapide elaborated on the significance of being counted “as the heathen and publican”:
“For he who despises the prelate of the Church giving him admonition, despises the whole Church which he represents and rules, and shows thereby that he does not want to be a son or citizen of the Church. Therefore, he must be accounted not a faithful Christian, but a heathen and a publican, that is to say, a public sinner. . . Again, let him be to thee as the heathen, that is, let him be expelled, excommunicated and separated from the Church by its prelate, lest his crime and his obstinacy infect the faithful with its contagion: let him be considered, rather, a heathen, i.e., an infidel and a pagan, devoid of all faith or knowledge of God, or religion or the law. This implies that you must not eat with him, as Paul commands (1 Cor. 5:11), nor greet him (2 John v. 10), that he may be confounded by the disgrace, acknowledge his fault, and return to the Church.” (Cornelius à Lapide, The Holy Gospel According to Saint Matthew, Volume II, pp. 211-212)
These words make it clear that those who consider themselves to be part of the unity of the Church must nonetheless be excluded if they refuse to follow the Church’s teachings. How, then, can we respond to the words of seemingly sincere Catholics who would say the following?:
“Is it not right, it is often repeated, indeed, even consonant with duty, that all who invoke the name of Christ should abstain from mutual reproaches and at long last be united in mutual charity? Who would dare to say that he loved Christ, unless he worked with all his might to carry out the desires of Him, Who asked His Father that His disciples might be ‘one.' And did not the same Christ will that His disciples should be marked out and distinguished from others by this characteristic, namely that they loved one another: ‘By this shall all men know that you are my disciples, if you have love one for another’? All Christians, they add, should be as ‘one’: for then they would be much more powerful in driving out the pest of irreligion, which like a serpent daily creeps further and becomes more widely spread, and prepares to rob the Gospel of its strength.”
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